By default, when users install Chrome, they receive the most stable and supported build available. However, Chrome fans and web developers have long been able to opt into new Chrome features by installing pre-release packages such as Chrome Beta and Dev. Historically it's been impossible to install these pre-releases on the same computer as stable Chrome, forcing developers to choose between testing their site in the next version of Chrome and experiencing their site as users see it now.

Starting today, Chrome Beta and Chrome Dev can be installed on the same Windows computer as stable Chrome and run simultaneously, allowing developers to more easily test their site across multiple versions of Chrome. This means side-by-side Chrome installation is available on Windows, Android, and Linux, and will be made available on other platforms in future releases.

Chrome, Chrome Beta, and Chrome Dev can now be installed side by side on the same Windows computer.

To install Chrome Beta or Chrome Dev, visit the Chromium release channels page. If you already have Chrome Dev or Beta and wish to run it side-by-side with stable Chrome, you'll need to uninstall it and then reinstall from this page. To easily transfer your bookmarks, settings, and other data, sign in to Chrome before you uninstall. And if you see something not quite right in Chrome Dev or Beta, please send us feedback.

Modules allow developers to declare a script's dependencies and are already popular in third-party build tools, which use them to bundle only the required scripts. This release adds native support for JavaScript modules via the new <script type=module> element.

Native support means the browser can fetch granular dependencies in parallel, taking advantage of caching, avoiding duplications across the page, and ensuring the script executes in the correct order, all without a build step.

Web Share API

To allow users to easily share content on social networks, developers have had to manually integrate sharing buttons into their site for each social service. This often leads to users not being able to share with the services they actually use, in addition to bloated page sizes and security risks from including third-party code.

Sites can now use the new navigator.share API on Chrome for Android to trigger the native Android share dialog, allowing the user to easily share text or links with any of their installed native apps. In a future release, this API will also be able to share to installed web apps.

The navigator.share API allows the user to share content with a variety of native apps via the native Android share dialog.

WebUSB

Most hardware peripherals such as keyboards, mice, printers, and gamepads are supported by high-level web platform APIs. To use specialized educational, scientific, or industrial USB peripherals, users must find and install potentially unsafe drivers and software with system-level privileges.

Chrome now supports the WebUSB API, allowing web apps to communicate with peripherals given a user's consent. This enables all the functionality provided by these devices, while still preserving the security guarantees of the web.

Other features in this release

Developers can now specify scrolling smoothness via a new optional parameter in existing Scroll APIs or with the scroll-behaviorCSS property.

The CSSOM View Smooth Scroll API brings native smooth scrolling to the platform through a the scroll-behavior: smooth CSS property or by using the window.scrollTo() DOM scroll method, eliminating the need to implement this behavior with JavaScript

To prevent the use of mis-issued certificates from going unnoticed, sites can use the new Expect-CTHTTP header which will enable automated reporting and/or enforcement of Certificate Transparency requirements.

Chrome will no longer decode frames for videos using Media Source in background tabs.

To increase consistency across on<event> attributes, onwheel attributes have been moved from Element to Window, Document, HTMLElement, and SVGElement.

To better follow spec and provide more granular control over the flow of referred content, Chrome now supports three new Referrer Policy values, same-origin, strict-origin, and strict-origin-when-cross-origin.

Following the change in spec, the maximum value for colSpan has been decreased from 8190 to 1000.